Empire of Ants
The Hidden Worlds and Extraordinary Lives of Earth’s Tiny Conquerors
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Narrated by:
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Cat Gould
About this listen
Ants number in the ten quadrillions, and they have been here since the Jurassic era. Inside an anthill, you'll find high drama worthy of a royal court; and between colonies, high-stakes geopolitical intrigue is afoot. Just like us, ants grow crops, raise livestock, tend their young and infirm, and make vaccines. And, just like us, ants have a dark side: They wage war, despoil environments, and enslave rivals - but also rebel against their oppressors.
Engineered by nature to fulfill their particular roles, ants flawlessly perform a complex symphony of tasks to sustain their colony - seemingly without a conductor - from fearsome army ants, who stage 12-hour hunting raids where they devour thousands, to gentle leafcutters cooperatively gardening in their peaceful underground kingdoms.
Acclaimed biologist Susanne Foitzik has traveled the globe to study these master architects of Earth. Joined by journalist Olaf Fritsche, Foitzik invites listeners deep into her world - in the field and in the lab. (How do you observe the behavior of ants just millimeters long - or dissect a brain the width of a needle?) Empire of Ants will inspire new respect for ants as a global superpower - and raise new questions about the very meaning of "civilization".
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For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes listeners on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life forms that are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life's diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior.
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Fascinating and Horrible
- By David A on 10-09-18
By: Carl Zimmer
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The Tree
- A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter
- By: Colin Tudge
- Narrated by: Enn Reitel
- Length: 19 hrs and 52 mins
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There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field. From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world - throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe - bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us.
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Not the book described in the Audible summary
- By E. Miller on 04-28-17
By: Colin Tudge
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Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You
- A Lively Tour Through the Dark Side of the Natural World
- By: Dan Riskin
- Narrated by: Dan Riskin
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin explains, it's also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless. Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be.
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Just a bunch of random animal behaviors.
- By Goddess on 05-18-23
By: Dan Riskin
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Superlative
- The Biology of Extremes
- By: Matthew D. LaPlante
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The world's largest land mammal could help us end cancer. The fastest bird is showing us how to solve a century-old engineering mystery. The oldest tree is giving us insights into climate change. The loudest whale is offering clues about the impact of solar storms. For a long time, scientists ignored superlative life forms as outliers. Increasingly, though, researchers are coming to see great value in studying plants and animals that exist on the outermost edges of the bell curve.
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Fascinating survey of amazing biology
- By Nerd's-eye view on 12-06-19
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The Galápagos
- A Natural History
- By: Henry Nicholls
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
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The Galapagos were once known to the sailors and pirates who encountered them as Las Encantadas: the enchanted islands, home to exotic creatures and dramatic volcanic scenery. In The Galapagos, science writer Henry Nicholls offers a lively natural and human history of the archipelago, charting its evolution from deserted wilderness to scientific resource (made famous by Charles Darwin) and global ecotourism hot spot.
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Thought-Provoking
- By Jean on 10-23-18
By: Henry Nicholls
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Silent Earth
- Averting the Insect Apocalypse
- By: Dave Goulson
- Narrated by: Dave Goulson
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
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In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making.
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Important book for all
- By Wren Jen on 03-24-24
By: Dave Goulson
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The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
- By: Elisabeth Tova Bailey
- Narrated by: Renee Raudman
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
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Elisabeth Tova Bailey tells the intimate and inspiring story of her year-long encounter with a snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, she becomes an astute and amused observer of the snail's surprising nocturnal adventures as it lives in a flowerpot on her nightstand. Intrigued by the snail’s clear decision making abilities, hydraulic locomotion, mysterious courtship, and molluscan anatomy, Bailey takes the listener deep into the life of this tiny amazing animal. With wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating recounts a remarkable journey of human and gastropod survival and resilience, and shows how the natural world illuminates our own human existence. Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Nonfiction, the John Burrough Medal Award for Natural History, and a National Outdoor Book Award. If you enjoyed Wesley the Owl, The Guest Cat, and Marley & Me, you'll enjoy this unique interspecies audiobook listen.
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This is an unexpected wonder. The quiet virtues of the snail reflect the quiet voyage of the author.
- By Frances on 08-03-15
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The Wonder of Birds
- What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future
- By: Jim Robbins
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
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Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.
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Stories about birds with something for everyone
- By D on 07-24-17
By: Jim Robbins
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How to Read Nature
- An Expert's Guide to Discovering the Outdoors You've Never Noticed
- By: Tristan Gooley
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 3 hrs and 14 mins
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Story
Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to shut down their senses and stumble through each day in an oblivious bubble, and yet some people end up having much richer experiences than others. In this guidebook, natural navigator Tristan Gooley strives to reawaken our senses to help us understand and deepen our personal experience of nature. His message is to connect - however we can and to whatever draws us in.
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A fool sees not the same tree a wise man sees
- By Mark A Bleakley on 08-07-18
By: Tristan Gooley
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Letters to a Young Scientist
- By: Edward O. Wilxon
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
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Overall
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Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career - both his successes and his failures - and his motivations for becoming a biologist.
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Long on biography, short on advice
- By A. Mandelin on 08-02-18
By: Edward O. Wilxon
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The Thing with Feathers
- The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
- By: Noah Strycker
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
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Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. The Thing with Feathers explores the astonishing homing abilities of pigeons, the good deeds of fairy-wrens, the influential flocking abilities of starlings, the deft artistry of bowerbirds, the extraordinary memories of nutcrackers, and other mysteries.
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Interesting book, terrible reader
- By MGM123 on 03-16-18
By: Noah Strycker
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Plants play a critical role in how we experience our environment. They create calming green spaces, provide oxygen for us to breathe, and nourish our senses. In The Nature of Plants, ecologist and nursery owner Craig Huegel demystifies the complex lives of plants and provides listeners with an extensive tour into their workings.
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So informative!
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Botanical Curses and Poisons
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In both history and fiction, some of the most dramatic, notorious deaths have been through poisonings. Concealed and deliberate, it's a crime that requires advance planning and that for many centuries could go virtually undetected. And yet there is a fine line between healing and killing: The difference lies only in the dosage!
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The narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 05-23-22
By: Fez Inkwright
What listeners say about Empire of Ants
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jason Gross
- 10-29-21
Ant facts aplenty
Overall a good listen. While the narrator did a fine job I did find myself wishing for a bit more emotion in the delivery.
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- Ali
- 06-11-23
fine facts, didn't like reader
The facts about about ants were interesting. Although the overall organization of the book wasn't my favorite. I did not care for the sing song voice of the person who read it at all. Every sentence ended on a pointed down note.
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- Alexandra
- 01-20-24
All the things I didn't know I needed to know about ants!
Not my favourite narrator: the performance was kind of dryand robotic, but it was a pleasure after all.
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- Placeholder
- 12-07-23
A new favorite book of mine!
I lived how fun this book was to listen to without being silly or anything less than very educational. I can never look at ants without respect again.
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- Jody Rivera
- 02-28-24
Great and very educational 
The narrator is very good and was great at keeping it entertaining while teaching about ants
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- Dreamweaver
- 03-06-23
Amazing.
Exhaustive, brilliant, in amazing detail, describing thousand of greatly varied ant behaviors around the world. Colorful! Expressive but calm narrator. Slaves, parasites, disguises, murders, coups, mating, ants do all we do and more!
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- Scott J Heraty
- 04-24-24
Good all around
Very cool facts, makes me love ants more. Good reader too. Short chapters that make it fun to read.
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- wolfe
- 12-29-21
underrated
I understand some of the reviews saying it was hard to listen to, but I dont agree at all. this book is excellent. it reads like a collection of summaries of the author's research projects with ants. I'd love to meet the author, I feel like we may be soul mates
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- Banyan
- 05-22-24
Fascinating
I just listened to this on a lark and found it fun and informative. This would probably be a good source of strange information if you are out to impress friends.
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- Seo-Woo Choi
- 05-30-21
Hellish recording
The quality of recording cannot be worse. The sibilance is very, very harsh. Not sure if it is the recording device or the voice actor, but the sibilance is extremely prominent - I learned what the word 'sibilance' means after listening to this because I wanted to know how to filter out that excruciating hissing sound. I own a dozen Audible audiobook, and none were even close to this. Absolutely painful to listen.
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